Cousins of grommets / WED 3-4-26 / Spicy chip brand / "Star Wars" droid, informally / Saucer crew, in brief / Delicacy that's often slurped / "Slow down there, big guy" / Cassette successors

Constructor: Wayne Bergman

Relative difficulty: Medium

[9A: "Star Wars" droid, informally]

THEME: List, interrupted — idiomatic phrases where the first word can mean "remove" or "omit," clued via lists wherein one element has been removed / omitted:

Theme answers:

• MISS THE MARK (3D: Twain, ___, Hamill, Wahlberg)
• SKIP A BEAT (7D: Metro, ___, Sports, Lifestyle)
• CUT A RUG (25A: Persian, ___, Oriental, Navajo)
• TAKE THE CAKE (11D: Red velvet, ___, Black Forest, angel food)
• PULL SOME STRINGS (55A: Violin, ___, cello, ___)

Word of the Day: CUT A RUG (25A) —

To dance, especially in a vigorous manner and in one of the dance styles of the first half of the twentieth century. (wiktionary)

• • •

This one had me at MISS THE MARK, and then PULL SOME STRINGS came along and upped the ante, making me admire the theme even more. The whole cluing concept here struck me as very original and genuinely entertaining, as well as interesting from a solving standpoint—you have to find the connections among the list elements and then also find an idiomatic phrase that might describe the list's omission. This made solving the theme answers a lot of fun. It also made things slightly treacherous in that fat, isolated upper-middle section, where two themers cross each other. That bit was like a self-contained puzzle—accessible only via narrow points of entry on the sides and at the bottom—and so it was hard to work my way in. Basically had to start with the 3s at the top of that section (ESP, AKA) and work down from there. Easy enough to see that RUGs were what the 25A clue was going for, but BEATs!? That was a little harder to get from the clue (7D: Metro, ___, Sports, Lifestyle). Those are sections of a newspaper to me ... which, yes, are technically "beats" that a news reporter might be on. Remember newspapers? Remember news? Good times. Anyway, not complaining about SKIP A BEAT at all, just saying it took some thought. Biggest screwup in that section for me came from writing in LPS for 25D: Cassette successors (CDS). Maybe I was thinking "predecessors"? I don't know. I think of CDS as [LP successors], but maybe there's some idea that the two formats in question are small and portable? Whatever. I just screwed up, which definitely affected my ability to get into that fat upper-middle part. It's a testament to the theme's quality that my frustration in that section didn't lead to any sour feelings toward the puzzle. CUT A RUG! Of course. Always aha, never ugh today.

Well, never ugh with the theme material. There was some ugh with the fill, but not enough to spoil the solve. You do have a lot of 3s today, and there's never anything good to say about 3s. They're just ... there, at best. RAH UAE ESP AKA TEL ORE HUR. But there was nothing unusual or particularly ugly about today's 3s, and in the slightly longer stuff, only ESAI and ARTOO gave me that "ugh, you again?" And when the fill gets a little longer, things get genuinely interesting. You can take "OK, I SEE" and throw it in the ocean (same with all jury-rigged "OH-" and "OK-" and "UH-" phrases) but PAPERLESS and RECOMMITS and SAKE BAR and even TOILET LID (32D: Head covering?), I like, and "EASY TIGER" really wins the day. The fact that the constructor managed to squeeze such a great phrase into that already thematically dense upper-middle section is really impressive. 

Outside of the upper-middle, things were pretty straightforward and deal-with-able. Hardest answer for me to come up with was CAR LOT, which has a clever but (for me) absolutely brutal clue (46A: Mini mart?). Mini is a make of car, which I always forget ... or fail to see when crossword clues decide to use it in a punny fashion. I had almost all the letters in place and still had no idea what the clue was going for "CARLO-, CARLO- ... CARLOS? Who is this CARLOS and why is he a "Mini mart?"). 

Bullets:

• 9A: "Star Wars" droid, informally (ARTOO) — hate when the name is written out phonetically like this. Always stupid-looking. Ah well. We made it well over a week without a Star Wars reference. Ten days, to be precise. That nearly equaled the longest such streak of the year (which is currently eleven—Jan. 4-Jan. 15)
• 19A: Spicy chip brand (TAKIS) — this snack (flavored rolled tortilla chips, shaped like little taquitos) has really come on strong in recent years. The first ever appearance came only in February of last year (!), despite the fact that TAKIS have been around since 2001. Today's was the fifth appearance (three in the singular, two in the plural).

• 31A: Saucer crew, in brief (ETS) — ok ETS and flying saucers aren't real, and the clue should probably indicate fictionality somehow, but I love the phrase "saucer crew" so much that I don't care. Two words that belong nowhere near each other ... near each other. Nice.
• 50A: Where you might drink from a junmai glass (SAKE BAR) — lotsa Japanese material today. SUMO wrestlers at the SAKE BAR wearing OBIS. Actually, SUMOs don't wear OBIS. Instead, the wrestlers, known as RIKISHI, wear loincloths called MAWASHI (total number of NYTXW appearances for RIKISHI and MAWASHI: zero).
• 64A: Pay for play, perhaps (TYPO) — another clever clue. Surface meaning is very convincing / misleading. But no, the answer is not (say) ANTE. You have to imagine "pay" and "play" in scare quotes, indicating you are dealing with them as words alone—their particular meaning doesn't matter, grammatically. 
• 13D: Delicacy that's often slurped (OYSTER) — the only food I can think of that I want absolutely nothing to do with. "Slurping" is unpleasant generally, but somehow slurping ramen, say, seems fine, while slurping an OYSTER ... gag.
• 39D: Cousins of grommets (EYELETS) — sincere first thought: "... Wallaces?"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Intentionally cause drama / TUES 3-3-26 / Genre for wannabe sleuths / Garam ___ (South Asian spice blend) / "Come to our rescue!" / Leaves shocked

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare here for the first Tuesday of March — surprise! Hope everyone is staying warm and hasn’t been too affected by the crazy winter. DC didn’t get hit too badly in the recent storm, and the snow thankfully melted pretty quickly (so I was able to bike again). Then it got warm enough last Saturday for a picnic — and now it’s supposed to be almost 80 this weekend. Wild. I’ve been missing having the Olympics to watch, but I’ve been rooting on my Liverpool (which is doing a bit better lately), watching the Unrivaled playoffs and cheering on the Penguins (minus Sidney Crosby because of the evil Czech player who hurt him). 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Drew Schmenner

Relative difficulty: On the easy side for a Tuesday

THEME: FIRST THINGS FIRST — In order, things you supposedly do first thing in the morning after waking up

Theme answers:

• STIR THE POT (18A: Intentionally cause drama) 
• GET UP TO SPEED (26A: Learn all the latest info) 
• STRETCH LIMOS (47A: Promgoers' luxurious rides) 
• SHOWER GIFT (60A: Present for an expectant mom or bride-to-be)

Word of the Day: SHERA (17A: He-Man's superheroine twin sister) —

Adora, known by her alter ego She-Ra, is a superheroine in the Masters of the Universe franchise. She is introduced as the protagonist of the 1985 Filmation series She-Ra: Princess of Power, which reveals her to be the long lost twin sister of He-Man. She-Ra again appears in the 2018 reboot She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.A series of toys under her name was produced by Mattel in 1984. She has also appeared in a number of Masters of the Universe comic books, most notably in DC Comics' 2012–2018 MOTU comic series, a roughly 1,000 page single story arc, collected in the 2019 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Omnibus hardcover release… She-Ra is known for her incredible feats and charisma. She has been shown multiple times to be able to lift not only full-grown men and robots, but also mountain-like rocks and buildings. She is depicted as being extremely fast and acrobatic. Her speed allows her to easily deflect multiple incoming energy blasts with her sword. (Wiki)

• • •

So, that puzzle is… fine? I’m really tired so I liked that it was a bit easier than Tuesdays often are, but it felt bland to the point that I don’t really know how to describe it. FIRST THINGS FIRST, I didn’t love the theme. The revealer says to look at the starts of the theme answers, so after finishing the puzzle I looked at STIR (18A), then tried to make it mesh with GET (26A). Hmm… STIR and GET, related to FIRST THINGS FIRST? It took me a bit to recognize GET UP as the “start” of the second theme answer. To be fair, the revealer only says it’s hinting to the “starts” of the answers. But to have three of them be one word and the fourth be two feels wrong. 

Besides, the actions in the theme answers aren’t what I would guess the average person does once they first wake up (or maybe people are better than me and actually do stretch or do yoga or something like I’ve been saying I’ll try to do for years). I realize that any such list of actions wouldn’t fit everybody, but this list didn’t quite sit right with me. I did, though, like the phrases for the first two answers — STIR THE POT (18A) and GET UP TO SPEED (26A). 

Other than that, the puzzle just felt full of short-ish, common words. I thought the most interesting and fun answers were MUTATING (9D: Changing genetically) and CHIRP (11D: Cricket's call) and TWEETS (68A: Sounds from baby robins). HUSHES UP (39D: Keeps from being publicly known) was also decent. LIESL (33D: Eldest von Trapp daughter in "The Sound of Music") is a great and uncommon name for a puzzle. And the clue for LOO (8D: Where to go in the U.K.?) is decently cute. But, EST (35D: Winter setting in D.C.) next to ETS (36D: Sci-fi space travelers)? AIRS (4D: Broadcasts)? RETIE (12D: Knot again)? OREO (58A: Black bits in cookies and cream)? MOW (52D: Cut the grass)? ELECT (50D: Vote into office)? Where were the interesting, long downs? The clever clues even if the answers were routine? 

It also felt like the constructor was trying a bit to be ~hip~ and ~with the times~ with words and phrases like SLAPS (31A: Is awesome, in slang), NORMIE (65A: Person with mainstream likes, pejoratively), AMIRITE (23A: "Don't you agree with me?," informally), and SPITS BARS (3D: Raps freestyle, in slang). Those are fine, and I personally like when the puzzle sometimes skews younger. But it mostly feels like this meme to me:

The puzzle may have been on the easy side because there were only around eight proper nouns, which feels like less than normal, and they certainly weren’t hard, with the possible exception of SHE-RA (17A).  

And that's about all I can think to say…

Misc.:

• The puzzle was clearly wrong about morning routines, because doesn’t everyone wake up to their puppy stealing their pillow at 6 AM, then almost falling off the bed and hitting their head on the bedside table? Or is that just me? But she’s so cute and just wants to cuddle, so I can’t stay mad for long. Until tomorrow, when she maybe successfully shoves me off the bed. 
• D.C. got a callout in 35D with EST. But I can’t wait until we’re in EDT in just a week! Losing an hour of sleep is so, so worth its being lighter later. That means more time for another picnic this weekend! 
• You’re really going to clue IAN (22A) McKellen as Magneto and not Gandalf?! That feels sacrilegious. I mean, I enjoyed some of the X-Men movies, but Lord of the Rings is the best of all time. 
• I remembered the name LIESL (33D) because of the iconic “Sixteen Going On Seventeen” song in “The Sound of Music.” I watched that movie a lot growing up. Just earlier today I was thinking of “snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes” from the song “My Favorite Things,” as the pretty snowflakes were coming down. 
• This may be a reach, but OGRE (​​58D: Shrek, e.g.) obviously makes me think of one line from this promo sketch that SNL did for Connor Storrie hosting this past Saturday. Everyone must watch. I’ve been rather obsessed with “Heated Rivalry” (and the stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams) ever since it aired, so I watched SNL all the way through for the first time in many years. 
• February was another good reading month for me. I’ve moved on a bit from my literary fiction horror phase and have now entered my romance phase. Though I’m currently in the middle of the audiobook for “Carl's Doomsday Scenario,” the second in a series. The narrator is absolutely fantastic and does so many incredible voices. It makes biking in the snow and being cold a little less miserable (yes, I did that today; and, yes, I still feel cold hours later).

And with that, I hope everyone has a great month of March!

Signed, Clare Carroll, last thing last

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